That I Love My Country More
by Rosette C. H
Summary: Christmas of 1825 at the Enjolras home. A short story of a semiromantic nature. Slightly revised


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"He did not seem to know that there was a being on Earth called woman."- V.H.

Enjolras stood shivering in the unusually bitter cold outside the door of his parents' house. In theory, it was still his house as well, and he could have simply entered, but following his extended absence, it felt unnatural. After what felt like an eternity in the lowest circle of Dante's hell, the door opened.

"Monsieur Laurent, what are you doing waiting to be admitted to your own house?" Marie chided. She had been the head maid there for longer than Enjolras could remember; home only began to feel familiar again now that she had resumed behaving like a maiden aunt. "I have just thrown the rest of the staff into a panic because I thought the guests had started arriving early. Now come inside and thaw yourself."

"I see that nothing has changed here," he remarked in a neutral tone. He picked up his bag and started upstairs.

"Where do you think you are going?" Marie halted him. His parents might have taken offense from the manner in which Marie tended to forget all terms of respect when anything threatened her organization. Fortunately, they were never present when she did.

"To put this in my room," he answered. Marie shook her head as she physically removed the bag from his hand and set it on the floor.

"Not before you've seen your mother. I'll have somebody take that upstairs- remember, that's what your father pays us to do, Monsieur Laurent. No, leave your coat with me. Now you can go to your mother. She's right through there."

Enjolras glanced around. It had been a long time since he had been attacked by an efficient servant. Obviously, he would need to make himself grow accustomed to them again. After the few seconds it took for him to absorb that his bag and coat were gone, he followed Marie's direction towards his mother's parlor.

Madame Enjolras relaxed visibly when she saw her son enter the room. "Oh, Laurent, is it only you?" she asked. The statement was so typically Mother that his desires to roll his eyes and to laugh out loud cancelled out each other. After a few seconds delay, she realized what she had said. "But that is a good thing, 'only you,'" she attempted to explain. "I was just given word that one of the guests must have arrived early, and I am sure we are not in the least ready- oh, listen to me, saying everything all wrong," she broke off her sentence. "I should have just said 'Merry Christmas,' or something."

"Or something," he agreed. "Merry Christmas, Mother."

"You are the only one who has arrived, are you not?" she asked, still a trifle nervous.

"Yes, only I," he assured her. Madame sighed in relief and retrieved her hastily abandoned needlepoint- a hobby at which she had always been clumsy but with which she passed the time, while others did tasks for which they were better suited than she.

Uneasily, Enjolras waited for a word from her. "Why are you still standing?" she asked. "Sit. Sit down. This is your home, you know." No less awkwardly, he obeyed. "You certainly have timed your arrival for the last minute." What might have been an accusation became a casual remark as its maker's eyes drifted back towards her work.

"It is only the twenty-second, Mother," he reminded her, just a tad more irritably than might have been necessary. If she noticed the tone, she did not respond to it.

"Yes. The same day our guests are arriving. I could not have them here when the family was not even collected yet," she explained, trying to convey the utter helplessness of her situation. "You know that you did not come home at all last year. If you had not arrived before tomorrow, what would I have been able to do about the seating at dinner?"

Enjolras shifted uncomfortably in the chair. "Would that have been a problem?" he asked, his mind running ahead to answers which he did not want to hear.

"Of course," she responded, still not looking at him. "Whom else could I possibly place next to Fleur Royer?"

Gathering his nerve, he stared at the floor for just a second before he could force himself to ask the next question. "Must you?"

That managed to provoke a few seconds of awkward, for him, eye contact. "I thought you were always fond of Fleur," Madame reminded him. Translation: she must, and why would he object?

Madame Enjolras found herself looking no longer into her son's eyes, but at their lids and lashes while he looked for words. Apparently, he expected to find them written somewhere next to his shoes. "She is… well, just… so very young," he decided eventually.

"Nonsense," his mother declared. "She has done no less growing up than you have since you left-"

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I doubt it, he thought, not entirely cruelly, but he held his tongue.

"She turned sixteen last month, in case you have forgotten. Now why not go to your room and get ready to greet the guests?" Enjolras thought of several things he would like to say, but settled on the one most likely to keep peace in the household.

"Yes, Mother." He rose and left.

********

Once the guests actually did arrive, the evening became the awkward affair that Enjolras expected. "What are you doing in the city on your own," asked as a sort of generic, college boy guaranteed conversation starter, followed before he could answer with an "In my day…" invariably leading to anecdotes of useless youth, which besides being uninteresting at best, were often quite hard to comprehend of his father's friends. Perhaps the next time Combeferre made an invitation to visit his family, he ought to accept it.

"Happy birthday," a young, female voice said behind him. He turned around.

"…Mam'zelle Royer," he said, thrown for barely a second. As his mother had probably meant by the "growing up" comment, she had gotten prettier over the past year, but he was not going to think about that. "I do not think anybody else has remembered, between saying 'Merry Christmas.'"

"But how could they forget?" Fleur smiled; she smiled more naturally, more brightly than most of the polite faces around them. "Born on the darkest day of the year and looking for the light ever since. Now tell me what you have been doing that keeps you from writing."

"Finding its trail and getting the occasional distant glimpse." Silently, he reminded himself that contrary to all appearances, the type of light he meant had nothing to do with the one in two dark eyes staring up at him. He looked around for potential escape routes. He had a few mutual relations with Combeferre. Were any of them here, and possibly interested in some news of him?

"I was not looking for metaphors," she admonished, trying but failing to look stern. "Now tell me what you are really doing."

"Law school," he answered quickly. There had to be a way out somewhere.

"That is not an answer, either." She was not insulted yet, only confused. Enjolras wondered how long he could keep her that way. "You are not in class all the time, and most of the time you are must be terribly boring. So either prove me wrong by convincing me of how fascinating your studies are, or tell me everything else."

Everything. Was she really so young that she thought that, just by wanting to understand everything, she could? About half the things he would have liked to say would have been lost on her, a sheltered girl barely sixteen. In the light of that, the other half would need to remain unsaid, for the best interest of all involved. "Excuse me," he said, turning his face away. "It is a bit too warm in here." Willing himself to be deaf to Fleur's words and those of any other who might have addressed him, he strode quickly out of the room.

*******

The garden was cold, but there was something comforting in the frigid weather. If not precisely comfortable, the cold was at least reassuring, and safe; the security of that which has been accepted as inevitable. He was too lost in thought to hear the young woman approach until she sat beside him on the cold, stone bench.

"You will freeze," he told her, staring at a patch of ground several feet in front of his toes.

"Not until after you do," she replied. "How long have you been hiding out here?" The concern was touchingly real, but the cheer was clearly artificial and on the verge of disintegrating. Enjolras suspected that she would be near tears soon. He would not turn to see them.

"Hiding?" he asked, his voice hollow. "Why would I be hiding?"

He ought to have known that she would not accept what was obviously a lie. "What was that, inside, Laurent?" she exclaimed. He was not willing to be so cruel as to say "A Christmas party," and the next safest response he could find was to say nothing. "You are gone for over a year and you have nothing to say to me? The boy I remember would at least have stayed to talk about nothing."

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I have too much to say to you, he thought, his lips pressing into a tight line that might almost have resembled anger. There were so many things that he ought to discuss with somebody; somebody just enough outside of them as to be able to listen objectively. For all her sympathy, Fleur was not meant to be practical, nor to make sacrifices. "You ought to go back to the party," he finally forced himself to say.

"You will not come back with me?" she asked one last time. Some seconds passed that she watched the boy statue for some sign of agreement, of affection, or of forgiveness- not that she knew why she needed it. Finding none, the girl merely kissed him on the cheek and began to walk back inside. She wondered if perhaps he still might follow.

Enjolras did not move, but if someone had been there to see, they would have known how it looked for marble to blush.


End file.
